Rest vs. Activity: Meeting The Needs Of Your Body/Mind & Soul?

If the following experiences keep popping up, they may be clues hinting that your relationship to rest and activity is out of balance :

When you’re beating yourself up for once again reverting to old, unwanted, and unconscious behaviors.

When you set a goal for yourself that looks like it’s reachable, but you find yourself exhausted and tired of striving so hard to reach it.

When you keep pushing yourself despite the fact that you’re tired and need to rest.

Like the fibers in a muscle, we must learn how to work together with all of our needs, allowing some to be put aside while we rest, and freeing others to emerge and take us in a seemingly different direction.

Learning to tune into the guidance of the body and to honor its intelligence requires wisdom. And this wisdom is rooted in being able to hold both rest and activity, both the goal and journey, as partners in the creation of your desires come true.

Take a moment and explore your own position in relationship to rest and to activity. Do you feel pulled toward one and away from the other? Does one hold a more valuable place than the other in your hierarchy of what’s important to you? Do you avoid work by overemphasizing rest? Or do you avoid rest and overwork? Your answers may surprise you — IF — you look deeply and carefully.

Whatever your reasons for choosing one over the other, the reality is they are in partnership. Only by embracing the value of each can you ride the energy flow between them.

Then you can more easily and peacefully get where you wish to go . . . wherever that may be . . . with a relaxed body, a refreshed mind, and a soul happy to have been given a moment or two during the day to breathe free.

I invite you to give it a try and explore what you think and feel about rest and activity in your life. Who knows? Something valuable you had not seen before might come into view.

About the Author

Ragini MichaelsRagini Elizabeth Michaels is an Author, Therapist, and Trainer of Communication and Modeling Skills, specializing in Behavioral Change. She has gained international recognition for her work and her reputation as a superb teacher, presenter, and the pioneering originator of Facticity® and Paradox Management.View all posts by Ragini Michaels →